Nurse Molly Returns

By Katherine Soh

Following a glorious period of independence overseas, Molly Goh returns to Singapore ready to start the next chapter of her life—as Staff Nurse at National General Hospital. Will she find a bright and boundless future? The man of her dreams? Perfect job satisfaction? Or the bombardment of bossy supervisors, quirky bureaucratic rules and bad first dates?

Nurse Molly has returned. But can she survive?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Epigram Books
• Release date: Dec 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9789810755607

Book preview

PROLOGUE

"SO DID YOU enjoy England?" the man in the middle asked with a smile. He seemed to be the main interviewer, flanked by another man on the left and a woman on the right. I never found out exactly who they were, or in what capacity they acted on my behalf. They sat in a row behind a six-foot-long cherry wood office desk, looking very distinguished and intimidating in their executive wear.

That morning, three days after returning to Singapore from the UK, I’d dressed my best for the interview with these no-doubt important personnel from the Public Service Commission office, which had sponsored my Bachelor of Nursing degree at the University of Manchester. It was September 1996, and I was having to reacclimatise to my homeland; gone were the frigid, wintry days of England, my woollies ditched for light cotton T-shirts.

This PSC interview was a significant one, and could potentially change the course of my life for the next eight years; I would need to exude professionalism both in demeanour and attire. Unfortunately, I’d never had an eye for fashion. My long, tight black skirt with a slit up the right thigh could have been worn by a lounge waitress at the Marina Mandarin Hotel, and my thin, striped, spandex turtleneck blouse and maroon cotton blazer might have been more appropriate for some retro costume party.

Without standing up, they’d begun their formal introductions, which I completely missed whilst trying to concentrate on the pointers from all the self-help books I had ever read on how to achieve interview success: stand tall, walk with your back straight. Smile, not too broadly, don’t show your teeth unnecessarily. Exude an air of confidence by holding your chin up and looking at the interviewer squarely in the face. Do not show fear.

I’d approached the tall chair facing them and sat down when the man in the middle had signalled me to do so. It was a swivel chair that was too high for my feet to touch the ground, and spun all too easily. Caught off guard, it had been all I could do to not fall off in a catastrophic roll-over-and-play-dead scene on the carpet.

Did you enjoy England? the man in the middle asked again. His smile began to fade, and I sensed an irritation at not receiving an immediate answer.

Yes, I did, I replied with a smile of my own. The books all said that I should mirror the interviewer as much as possible.

We see that you have done quite well with an upper second-class honours, and we received very good reports from your professor.

I smiled broadly, showing my teeth now, thinking that I should exhibit more confidence. Besides, I had nothing to say in return. Whilst remembering to keep a calm and composed face, I flexed my abdominals for all they were worth to keep my upper torso balanced, whilst my previous pointe training in ballet was put to good use in forming some resistance to the damn pivoting chair. I was like a duck in a pond: whilst its body floated above water seemingly with ease, it was paddling wildly underneath.

Then came the bombshell I was waiting for: What do you think is the single most important quality that a government should have to run a country successfully?

There. That was it.

My neural synapses raced down whatever grey matter was left functioning under all that stress and found a passage I had read about four years ago in church. The words just popped up in my head like I was reading the text there and then: King Henry VIII was infamous for having been married six times, but that did not stop him from wielding perhaps the most unfettered power of any English monarch. He prided himself neither on morality nor justice, but his people were enamoured with his charisma. Under his leadership, he brought about the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the union of England and Wales. He also introduced Protestantism to England.

A charismatic leader, I answered without hesitation and with full confidence. I narrowed my eyes too, believing it would make me look wiser. The interviewer looked slightly taken aback at my pronto response.

It was also an epiphany for me. It made sense that a charming leader would make all the difference in implementing changes, as he would have the support of his people. Wasn’t that how ex-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew had led our country to greatness? Without fail, his National Day Rally speech every year had invigorated and spoken directly to every citizen of the country. His fluency in the Hokkien dialect, Mandarin, Malay and English meant he could reach out to every race in Singapore. Most people believed whatever he’d said was for the good of us all, and things had turned out well, as evidenced by the way Singapore had developed since its independence.

Now I was ready to be challenged. All I needed was for him to ask me why I’d given that answer.

And do you think we have enough charismatic leaders? he asked with one amused eyebrow raised and a slight chuckle.

He had not given me the satisfaction of explaining my most learned answer on how the rise of England’s peace and prosperity during the Tudor reign was attributed to the magnetic leadership of King Henry VIII. Instead, alarm bells rang in my head as I wondered if it was a trick question to test my political affinity.

I do not think I am in a position to comment on that, I replied diffidently and with a silent sigh.

It later dawned on me that if I had said honesty, integrity, or some other commonly accepted values, he might have bombarded me with paragraphs of pre-meditated responses grilling me further for justification of my opinion.

Instead, just as suddenly as the interview had begun, he closed my file and said firmly, Right, we have posted you to National General Hospital, and we wish you all the best.

NGH? I said, trying to hide my nervous uncertainty. Had they just served me my fate for the next eight years on a proverbial platter without even asking what my preferences were?

This didn’t seem right. My predecessors had told me that the interviewers would ask me where I wanted to go and I would be able to state my request then. The general advice was to request a posting to St Joseph’s Hospital, where career progress was faster and more supported by management.

Perhaps I should have made my preferences known. I desperately wanted an opening gambit, but found none. Before I knew it, I was smiling and nodding self-effacingly, uttering words like, I will do my best, and striding out of the office with a sure look on my face.

I could have kicked myself.

As a teenager, I had seen ads on television calling for people to step forward and make a difference in the lives of the sick and needy. And with my strong grades and Christian impulse to help others, I felt ready for my noble and rewarding career as a nurse.

I could just see myself: a modern day kind and gentle Florence Nightingale dressed demurely in a white starched frock, helping a recently paralysed stroke patient to take his first step. Yes, gently now, focus on your muscles, lift up your foot and there you go! A leap for mankind! He’s done it! He’s taken his first step! I give an encouraging smile, and he returns my demure gaze, eyes watering with gratitude at my perseverance and patience. In the background, someone claps in awe.

Oh yes, I couldn’t wait to be a nurse!

However, almost all my Public Service Commission nursing seniors had cautioned me about an appointment at NGH, the largest tertiary and research hospital in Singapore. They spoke of its notoriously draconian management, the fast-paced work environment, and the insufferable fates of scholars who arrived there and were never promoted to management levels even after five or six years.

I was a diligent and responsible girl; most of my school report cards had reflected this fact. I was also willing to work hard and do whatever it took to get the job done. So how bad could it be? I also wasn’t too concerned about the lack of speedy promotions. I had gotten into nursing because I wanted to care for the sick; being promoted to Sister would mean much fewer bedside hours, which was not in my life plan. I wanted to make a difference in someone’s life. Nursing was the way to make my own life meaningful; I was sure I would be happy in the vocation, come what may.

If I did my work conscientiously and stayed out of management’s way, I should be able to get by, right?

1 INTERNAL MEDICINE

AT AGE SEVENTEEN, I signed twelve years of my life away for what I had thought was a good deal. The government had offered to sponsor my four-year studies in England: tuition, living expenses and other miscellaneous items like books and warm clothing. I would be financially covered for all my years overseas, plus the money might cover a few trips around Europe if I lived frugally. After that, I would have a job that would feed me for the next eight years.

When I had pulled out my calculator and done the math, I thought it was too good to be true. I would have been a fool not to sign on the dotted line.

So now, at age twenty-two, it was payback time. I’d had a wonderful four years, but now I would have to keep up my end of the deal. The only thing was that it had never crossed my mind to wonder if the people at my future workplace would warm up to me, or even worse, go all-out to make my life hell. What would I do then?

This was exactly the situation in which I found myself on my first day in my first ward in the Department of Internal Medicine.

So tell me, Staff Nurse Molly Goh, said Senior Staff Nurse Shanti d/o (daughter of) Shankar, why did you choose to take the scholarship and do a degree overseas when you could have done it locally at Nanyang Polytechnic?

I looked at the swarthy, astute face sizing me up over the open nurses’ counter, eyes gleaming and nose flaring, with a red dot between her well-preened eyebrows. Her long, black hair was gathered up in a bun so taut that it pulled her no-nonsense eyes longer at the sides. My sweeping scan also couldn’t help taking in the shapely body under her made-to-fit tight nurse’s frock.

Behind her, a frenzy of activity was taking place in an interminable series of rooms branching off the sterile hospital corridor. Auxiliary nurses wearing uniforms of different colours were traversing briskly across stations to attend to the ménage of patients that needed their teeth brushed, faces washed and bodies showered. Patients were wheeled like clockwork to and from the common bathrooms. Those who had already been cleaned sat upright in beds with newly changed sheets, waiting for breakfast to be served.

A scrawny staff nurse pushing a huge medicine trolley almost three times her size dished out oral medications in little disposable cups, calling out names and checking patients’ wrist bands and bed numbers. She had the fairest skin I’d ever seen, but she was extremely thin. She looked even more malnourished than some of the patients. Nonetheless, she worked like a stevedore up and down the corridor, with eyes sharp as diamonds focused on serving the right medication to the right patients. I wondered if I would get to know her. Weaving around her were teams of doctors, all with stethoscopes slung around their necks, pacing between the rows of beds to see their patients.

I had arrived at eight o’clock in the thick of ward action that resembled a marketplace. Especially when a gargantuan food trolley arrived just then and a healthcare assistant shouted, Breakfast! before plugging the trolley’s heating cord into a wall socket to keep the food warm.

Well? Shanti persisted, staring down at me. The red bindi on her forehead blurred as my eyes tried to focus. It didn’t help that I was a mere five foot one. Everyone was always towering over me, whether they meant to or not.

Oh, I’m sorry, are you waiting for an answer? I’d thought it was a rhetorical question.

What? Did I not sound like I was asking a question?

No… uh, yes. I er, was er… I stammered and blubbered, but was saved from giving an answer as the station’s nursing officer, Sister Tay, surfaced from her office adjacent to the nurses’ counter and interrupted the bleak conversation. All nursing officers were called Sisters, but it had nothing to do with Catholicism. It was a title of respect given to higher-ranked nurses who were either in charge of a station or ward, or who were clinicians in medical specialities.

We all so busy here, she began, with unmistakable local grammar, her head shaking rhythmically. You know, we are mother ward of Department of Internal Medicine!

Gleaning her disposition, I could sense a tempest brewing.

"And take in all other strays also! If there any cases just slightly related to general medicine, bed management will throw to us. You think if patient has a chest condition, he should be sent to the respy ward, right?"

I tried to follow the testy Singlish conversation by nodding affirmatively. Meanwhile, I saw Shanti hurry away into a six-bedded room nearest to the nurses’ counter to help an assistant nurse lift a patient onto a commode.

"Wrong! Bed management say he got weird fever. I just on the phone telling them off! Can’t keep sending us all sorts. We very busy here." She shook her head furiously and rapped the counter hard with a firm index finger. I’d never handled aggressive communications very well and her emotional ventilation was setting off all sorts of alarm bells in my head.

And we are full house! she cried, her hands gesticulating wildly over her head, to my terror. "Not a bed to spare, so they can